Senators most promising NHL team, but Leafs, Oilers and Flames three of the least, Vollman says

When you look at the true talent and real performance of all 30 NHL teams, the Edmonton Oilers were in fact the worst team in the NHL in 2013, concludes hockey analytics expert Rob Vollman in his new book, Rob Vollman’s Hockey Abstract.

This is just one of the many fascinating and controversial tidbits Vollman puts forward in his new book, which uses hockey analytics to try and answer which NHL players and teams were the best and worst, most under-rated and over-rated. The book sells for $19.95 (the PDF version is $12.95).

Vollman’s publisher bills the book as hockey’s version of the Bill James’ Baseball Abstract: “Statistical analysis is coming to hockey in a wave very similar to the one that hit baseball years ago. To prepare the baseball world for the boom in statistics, they needed a guide book that could act as a foundation, and that was Bill James’ Baseball Abstract. Hockey, too, needs that guide book: a Hockey Abstract that can show how the sport can be viewed through that same type of objective lens that James brought to baseball. At last, it is here.”

The book is highly readable and does a good job of explaining advanced stats concepts, as well as describing their strength and limitations.

The horrid Edmonton Oilers of 2013

Now back to this bit about the Oilers being the worst team last year.

How did Vollman come to this conclusion?

As Vollman describes it, in his system he “take the previous season’s standings and regress all the luck-based factors towards the norm (which means move them towards league average), like injuries, close-game and post-regulation records, and the percentages (save, shooting, special teams).”

The thinking is this: teams that shoot better than the league average tend to shoot not so well the following year. Teams that have lower goalie save percentages than the league average tend to do better the next year. Teams that get a lot more injuries than the league average tend to be healthier the next year. So if you account for those and other factors, you can actually see the true talent of a team in a given year.

Vollman tries to figure out how many goals the team would have scored for and against if it was just average in all these categories, with an average shooting and save percentage and an average number of injuries.

For example, here’s how Vollman factors out luck when it comes to shooting percentage and save percentage. “To determine how many goals a team would have scored based on skill alone, the luck portion of the team’s shooting percentage needs to be removed. Since about three quarters of a team’s shooting percentage over a full season fails to persist from season to season, every team’s shooting percentage can be watered down by adding three parts of the league average shooting percentage to one part of the team’s actual shooting percentage, and divided by four. Should a new study come out that disputes the use of three quarters, the newer figures can be used instead to calculate the luck-neutral shooting percentage. The same approach is used to calculate goals against, although studies suggest that the effect of luck on save percentage is slightly lower. Two parts of a league average save percentage should be combined with one part of the team’s actual save percentage, and divided by three to get the luck-neutral save percentage.”

“Multiplying these new, closer-to-average shooting and save percentage by the number of shots for and against will estimate the number of goals the team scored and allowed based on their actual persistent skill.”

“Finally, it’s important to conduct each of these goal calculations separately for the three major manpower situations, even-strength, power play, and short-handed. In the latter two cases, the sample size is so small that the luck-neutral shooting and save percentages should probably just be the league average.”

When it came to lucky shooting and goaltending last season, the Oilers were a bit lucky at even strength, the 12th luckiest team in the NHL last season in five-on-five play, according to HockeyAnalytics.

The Oilers were lucky on the penalty kill, as well, with the fifth highest save percentage.

Under Vollman’s formula, the Oilers don’t get credit for that even strength or special teams shooting and saving luck, so they end up scoring less and letting in more goals in his calculations.

Vollman also factors in injuries, with his system bumping up the ranking of teams that had a lot of injuries, such as Ottawa Senators. Vollman writes: “The Ottawa Senators, for example, missed out on over 18 goals last year thanks to Jason Spezza’s herniated disc and Norris Trophy winner, Erik Karlsson’s, lacerated Achilles tendon. As if that wasn’t enough, Milan Michalek’s knee injury and goalie Craig Anderson’s sprained ankle all added up to some pretty atrocious luck, luck that was only partially neutralized by particularly fortunate goaltending.

In 2013, the Oilers scored 124 and 135 goals in 48 gamesw, but when you give them average luck, Vollman has them scoring 201 goals and letting in 249 goals (over an 82 game season), making them the worst team in the NHL.

Just ahead of them are the Calgary Flames and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The best teams in the NHL last year, when you try to take out the luck factor, were the Ottawa Senators, the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks.

Hmmmm….

To predict how a team will do in 2013-14, Vollman takes a second step, which is “to make adjustments for all the major roster changes, including mid-season trades, free agent signings, rookies and other players coming in from other leagues and, in some cases, the natural improvement or decline of particularly young or old teams.”

When he does that, he figures the true talent of the Edmonton Oilers will see the team rise to 27th overall this coming year, ahead of only Toronto, Buffalo and Calgary.

And the best team?

“The most likely President’s Trophy winner according to this system is the Ottawa Senators. Despite finishing 12th overall last season, the Ottawa Senators could have finished first in 2012–13, too, had their luck come out a little differently, especially as it related to the health of Erik Karlsson and Jason Spezza.”

My take?

There’s some logic to Vollman’s method here, but I’d like to see him run this method on ten or twenty seasons in the past, to see how it did in predicting things. For instance, run all these numbers from 2010-11 and see what they predicted for 2011-12. Did it get it right? How often? Did it do better than other prognosticators?

As for the Oilers, the fact is that they weren’t much better at all in 2013 than they had been in 2011-12. They went sideways, but nonetheless managed to move up in the overall standings from 29th place to 23rd place.

As a unit, the Oilers’ scoring chance numbers trended in the wrong direction in 2013, which was extremely disappointing, and led me to believe that the firing of Coach Ralph Krueger was entirely warranted.

In 2010-11,the Oilers were the worst team in the NHL. That same year, they averaged 14.8 scoring chances for per game, while giving up 19.1 scoring chances against per game. Their overall scoring chances plus-minus was -4.3.

In 2011-12,the team improved, moving up one place in the NHL standings to 29th overall. When it came to scoring chances, they averaged 15.7 for and 18.4 against. That means they had created almost a chance per game more than the previous season, while giving up almost one chance per game less.

Their overall plus-minus was -2.7. That showed real improvement on the part of the team.

If that trend had continued this past season, the Oilers might have be in the playoff race.

But in 2013, while the team moved up in the standings, it dropped back a bit in terms of its overall performance. The Oilers averaged 15.7 scoring chances per game, while giving up 18.8 scoring chances per game. That is -3.1.

Not good.

Could it be Vollman is on to something here?

Still, this is a young team, one that should be on the rise, and that’s a reasonable expectation for 2013-14.

The goal for 2013-14 should be to average about 16.5 chances per game for while tightening things up immensely on defence, giving up no more than 17.0 chances per game.

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